


I Am Holding This For You

by HuntressFirefall



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Inspired by Richard Siken, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:14:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26290945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HuntressFirefall/pseuds/HuntressFirefall
Summary: Eiji's unconventional path to healing after losing Ash.
Relationships: Ash Lynx/Okumura Eiji
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	I Am Holding This For You

**Author's Note:**

> A oneshot inspired by the pseudo-prompts provided by the @sikenpoems Twitter account.

__

The dream had been the same since Eiji had returned to Japan and found out, within a few hours of coming home via a call from Max, that Ash was dead.

For the first three or four days after hearing Max say the words that Eiji somehow knew he'd hear one day before he ever got the chance to see Ash again, he was unable to sleep. It had nothing to do with jet lag, and everything to do with seeing the last... how many years had it been? ...whatever length of time Eiji had been in the US playing out before him.

Well, to be accurate, only the scenes that Ash was a part of.

The sleep-deprived stupor Eiji would slip into every time his eyes closed despite his best efforts felt like a time warp in which he was propelled back into an alternate reality where he'd managed to turn back time. Somehow, he'd will things to go differently this time. They wouldn't be discovered in the condo. Eiji would have been there when Ash let himself be taken into custody to stop him, offer himself instead, do _something_ to rescue him.

He would have been at Ash's side to stop Foxx from doing the unspeakable things he did to Ash. Because that... that had been the moment that Eiji somehow knew, deep down, that Ash had begun to crumble. That time was the one that had begun the sequence of Ash finally giving up, coming to the realization that he would never truly be free.

Eiji knew about this, that moment when Ash's strength had slowly begun to wane, because once he was finally able to sleep, the same angels always came for him. They walked him through the glistening, golden field, like the one in Cape Cod that summer. But different too, somehow, because it was also awash in crystal white, prism-like rainbow fragments everywhere, playing over the swaying fronds of rye, mixing with the dappled sunlight filtering through the leaves of ethereal trees.

__

The angels never let Eiji come too close. To cross that boundary meant going where he was not yet meant to go. Instead, he would stand perhaps two arms' lengths away, in front of Ash who was awash in white, the lines on his face gone, the permanent knot in his brow undone.

Each time, Eiji would only have time for one question. And so one by one, dream by dream, he built his final conversation with Ash, until there was just one thing left to be revealed.

This time, Eiji finally got the chance to ask the glistening, peaceful vision of Ash's very spirit the question he'd been holding back on. The one he felt he knew the answer to, but also didn't want confirmed.

“Why? Why didn't you save yourself? Why didn't you tell someone you needed help? Why did you just lay your head down and say nothing? Why did you let go?” The words came from Eiji's lips in a ragged half-shout, anger and desperation mixing.

_It was time. I had done all I set out to do. There was no guarantee I would ever be truly safe. But most of all... I did it so you would forget about saving me, and move on. We could never see each other again anyway. It was for the best._

Usually the angels would come and tell Eiji it was time to leave, and it was never enough time. They would drag him backwards, Ash's form shrinking as they pulled Eiji through the field toward the darkness that led back to the real world.

This time, Eiji tore himself from that place between sleep and awake, the anger fueling his retreat and the grief and despair crushing him upon opening his eyes.

The angels never came to take him back to Ash again. Eiji wouldn't let them.

It would be seven years before he allowed their return.

__

By the time Sing had broken through the wall that Eiji had carefully built over those seven years, Eiji found the memories had faded even though he thought never thinking them would preserve them. He actually found he couldn't clearly picture Ash's face anymore, remember the sound of his voice, the scent of the detergent that he'd do his laundry in, in that one laundromat that was open all night where no one ever went after 2 am, that hung about his clothes.

When Eiji opened the box he'd locked all the photos away in once he received his answer in a dream seven years earlier, it felt like getting hit with a train. The anger, the emotion, the grief, all of it left unaddressed came tumbling down on him like an avalanche. Locking it all away had solved nothing except the question of how to delay letting go.

That night, the angels came back for Eiji. They brought him to the field and there he stood, exactly as the photos remembered him. Forever young. Forever free.

_I told you to forget about me,_ Ash said, in that scolding tone that had always held affection that only Eiji could detect. _I told you to move on._

“I told you my soul was with you. When I locked you away, I lost who I became because of you.”

Eiji left the end of his youth, the end of his innocence, in the hands of the angels to give to Ash.

They promised they would as they took Eiji back home.

After that night, Ash didn't need the angels' help anymore. Now, he barged into that space between asleep and awake whenever he damn well felt like it.

Eiji hadn't realized it back then, what his intense emotions where when it came to Ash. He just wanted to save him, protect him, take him to a place where the vulnerable young man that Eiji only ever got to see would be able to show himself and thrive. But there had been one night in particular where Eiji came very close to that epiphany, one that was his most favorite memory of Ash -- and now he knew why that was.

__

On the night when Ash had asked – no, begged, in a rare moment of raw openness – for Eiji to stay with him, they had remained close to each other. It was one of the only times that Ash had allowed himself to be curled up in Eiji's arms as they talked about everything but what was written on the elephant in the room.

That night, Eiji learned that

  * Ash secretly loved hair metal. If the guys found out, he'd never hear the end of it. But nothing was more fun than blasting a Poison song and yelling your brains out.

  * If given the choice, Ash would always choose a hot dog over a hamburger. And no, that was **not** a euphemism, shut the fuck up.

  * Ash really wanted to go to a hair metal concert, but he knew he would never even watch the stage because crowded places were the ones where people like him disappeared, but not in the way that was good.

  * At Christmastime in New York, Ash loved the Rockefeller Center tree. His favorite thing was to go and stare into it until they turned it off at midnight every night. He could never pin down why that was, other than it looked cool when it happened.

  * Ash would never forgive himself for the death of the girl he had dated and not being honest enough with himself when he realized he loved her, but not _that_ way, to let her go before it happened.




With each revelation, Eiji felt that part of himself that cared deeply for Ash growing stronger. Every word was wrapped in the feel of Ash's body against his, muscles tensing and relaxing as each story was told. It was one of the precious few times that Ash would open up fully, let his guard down and be who he truly was.

And so every time Ash visited now, it was the same. A room bathed in white, a smattering of prism-like rainbows over the walls, across the white sheets of the bed they'd lay on. Eiji was 20 again and Ash was the age he would always be, in Eiji's arms. They never spoke, but rather let their hearts bind them together.

Eiji had always wanted to freeze those moments in time forever. Ash gave him his wish. The only thing that didn't make it perfect was that when the room went dark – when the stars would come out and the rainbows would lose their color to moonlight – it meant it was time for Eiji to leave, to return from whence he came.

It was always the same. He would open his eyes and there would be the wall, or the ceiling, or the pillow that he had clenched to his chest in his sleep, a physical surrogate for what his dreams showed him.

It was like losing Ash all over again, every time.

But at least Eiji knew what, and who, waited for him – someday, when there was no longer a need to return.

**Author's Note:**

> One of my Twitter friends periodically retweeted the @sikenpoems account, and I was continually struck by how so many of the poetry bits brought to mind the Banana Fish story. I started bookmarking them with the original thought to just do a bunch of short drabbles bounced off the tweets, but as I am wont to do it ended up becoming something entirely different once I finally got around to trying out my idea. As I started writing from the tweets I found I'd ended up stringing together a story rather than just random subjects, so I ran with that instead. This is the result.
> 
> I'm not sure if I'll do more of these, but if I do they'll be posted as their own oneshots rather than additional chapters to this one.
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Twitter: @HuntresFirefall | Pillowfort: HuntressFirefall


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